Defying Gravity
by Tuney Tun
Summary: Severus dropped his suitcase, facing the people's horrified expressions as he did so many times before "Alright, let's just get this over with. No, I am not seasick. Yes, I've always been green!". Wicked/Harry Potter crossover.
1. Prologue : Horrors

**DEFYING GRAVITY **

**a Harry Potter/Wicked AU crossover.**

Written as a gift for ~TheAtomicBoom • beta'd by Michelle • K+ (for now) • Drama/Comedy • WIP • Severus/Lily, James/Lily, unrequited Sirius→Tonks, unrequited Tonks→James (yeah, you've read it) • Some characters, therms and plotlines belong to J.K. Rowling, L. Frank Baum, Gregory Maguire and Winnie Holzman. I'm making no profit with this fic.

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><p><strong>Prologue: <em>Horrors<em>.**

"We should drown it," whispered a male voice "throw it in the river before she wakes up and tell her it was a stillborn."

"For goodness' sake Argus, he's just a child! He may look... _different_, but it doesn't mean he's some kind of demon that must be wiped from this world!" replied a woman in a sharp, low tone.

Eileen Snape found herself lying sweaty and weakened on her bed as her senses returned slowly. Turning her head to the right she glanced at the family servant, Argus Filch, talking to the midwife at the corner of the room while the house elf watched them with a bundle wrapped in linen between her arms.

"If we don't kill it now the Governor will find a way to get rid of the child anyway," said Filch, "he would never allow a rotten offspring to taint his precious name. Ha! Imagine this lil' creature growing up to rule Munchkinland someday!"  
><em><br>Tobias_, she thought, finally noticing his absence. Not that she expected him to be there; he would not care to watch his firstborn's arrival in this world as long as he was convinced that the birth of the future Governor of Munchkinland would be proficiently assisted so nothing could go wrong. Her husband was never by her side in her life's most significant moments unless his presence was incontestably required, as if their marriage was just another of his duties as a politician, but yet she felt in the depths of her heart that he still loved her in his very own way.

"I will never allow you to lay down one finger on this baby" dared the midwife, placing herself between Filch and the elf.

The menial ran out of patience, "In the name of Oz, Poppy, let me end this matter once and for all! It would be somewhat kinder to his mother if she never-"

"Where is my son?" the trio at the corner turned their heads to the bed where a sallow, yet resolute, Eileen Snape was seated with an inquisitive gaze in her coal-black eyes. "I wanna hold my son."

Filch hesitated. "Milady, we..."

"Do as I say."

Without a single word, Poppy bent over to the elf to reach for the wrap. As the midwife crossed the room, bringing the newborn, Eileen's heart skipped a beat when she noticed her own empty hands. Digging her arms under the mattress, she sighed with relief when her fingers found a tiny cylindrical form in the bed frame.

The green bottle.

She'd been clutching it as a lucky charm through every moment of those damned four hours of pain, screaming and blood that culminated in her fainting. A single look at it was enough to bring her back memories of the night she earned it, a sweet night that reprised itself over and over again in Eileen's memory.

It was a warm spring evening and she was alone in the living room, leafing through the pages of a sonnet book when she heard knocks at the front door, at least that's how she recalled it. Standing by the doorstep, an ordinary and grizzled man saluted her with his hat. He introduced himself as an outsider who had just arrived in town looking for shelter and maybe something to fill his stomach. Eileen was not the kind of woman who usually trusted people who were not of her acknowledgement, but there was such a crystalline quality in his gaze that she found it difficult to believe that the man might have bad intentions. She invited him to sit at the dining table and when she asked for his name the stranger just deviated with a head gesture, "Let's not talk about names," he said cordially, "a name would define me no more than my plain clothing or the color of my eyes. Let your own impressions dictate what you think of the man in front of you."

They had dinner by themselves, since Tobias was in Gillikin on a business trip. The man talked little about himself but opened his ears to her small talk that gradually became personal talk and suddenly she was letting her heart out of her chest in a way she hadn't done since... since she could remember. They kept on talking and giggling and exchanging confessions long after their plates were clean. It took a few moments until the conversation start to die slowly, leaving them with an accompliced silence.

When the clock strucked twelve, the stranger stood up and pulled a tiny green bottle, filled with a bright green liquid, from his pocket which he offered her as a gift in appreciation of her hospitality. He pulled himself out a second bottle when Eileen took the gift and together they toasted to their newly-engaged frienship.

The next thing she could remember was the touch of his lips on her bare skin as they layed down in the very bed she used to share with Tobias. The remembrance of that night unfolded in Eileen's mind like a patch quilt from which she could randomly recollect small details and sensations that followed her vividly thus far. Whoever he was, the stranger had made her feel alive than she had in years.

Eileen woke up alone in her bed the following morning, with no signs of the stranger anywhere. He had left at dawn, leaving no trace of his visit other than the blissful sensation in Eileen's heart and the tiny green bottle under her pillow.

And now, clenching her fingers around the flask, she knew nothing could harm her; for beauty can happen even in the darkest of times, as she learned from the mysterious wanderer months ago.

Poppy's gentle voice broke her flow of thought. "Here he is, my lady. A tough boy, did not even cry. Indeed, he hasn't even made a sound since I pulled him out," said the midwife, carefully placing the baby in his mother's arms and stepping back immediately. Eileen gave out a last glance to her servants' apprehensive expressions before uncovering her son's face.

"_Sweet Oz!_"

The baby's eyes were already open, deep black eyes like hers, through which he seemed to scrutinize her from an obscure corner of his mind. Scarce wisps of black hair entangled on the top of his head and he seemed somehow skinnier than the average newborn. But neither of those qualities were the cause of her interjection. Even by the reddish light from the fireplace her son's skin glittered an unmistakable shade of pale green.

Like a froggy, ferny cabbage. Green as sin.

Filch gulped sonorously and Eileen looked up at him, reading on his face that he expected her to have some sort of emotional breakdown and put the blame on someone for the grotesque tonality of her child. Notwithstanding, she just laid back down onto the pillows and held her son against her chest.

"Severus," she sighed closing her eyes. "I shall name him Severus."

And as the baby's green little hands held onto her clothes, she felt her heart sing for she knew there would be a reason for her to smile from this moment on.

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><p>Reviews are nice, me likes reviews.<p>

And I apologize in advance for the long hiatus you'll have to wait between an update and other, because I've got some crazy stuff happening on my life right now. So, be patient.

=)


	2. Chapter I : No One Mourns The Wicked

**chapter I** ● _**no one mourns the wicked**_.

"So you are the outlander, aren't you? Oh, thank you! Thank you so much! I don't know what we could possibly do to express our gratitude…"

Hermione Granger held Crookshanks against her chest when she was approached by a stranger of euphoric demeanor all dressed in green for the thirteenth time or so that afternoon. Outreaching her free hand to the fellow before her she greeted him with an awkward handshake while the cat hissed menacingly from her lap.

"Shhh…Crookshanks, it's alright. We'll be back home soon," she mumbled to the cat when the man walked away. Walking through the green pandemonium of the common folk she could feel the Emerald City fervering and fluttering around her like a huge, integrated living creature, throbbing and whooping in collective rejoicing.

"I just pity he has no grave," snootily remarked a gentleman to his wife when they walked past Hermione, "I'd personally spit on his tombstone if I'd get the chance. "

A few yards ahead Hermione caught a glimpse of three lads, not much older than her, playing with a wooden doll painted in green, whose nose was sculpted with disproportional largeness to his head's dimension. The doll was being violently flung amongst the boys, who repelled it with sticks and kicks until, tired of the playing, they fired up a match and put it to burn, a sadistic gleam reflected in their eyes as the flames devoured the plaything.

Hermione felt her stomach sink, taken by a sudden burst of guilt; from the top of her eight years of life she didn't expected to be idolized by a whole population for the — _what's the word?_— murder?— yes, "_murder_" of someone.

Nauseated, she turned her head back and gazed into the greenish revelling mob looking for some of her new friends for comfort; she spotted the Scarecrow being carried by a joyful crew shouting her name while the Tin Woman received a fine mantle embroidered with golden threads from a weedy little old lady and, looking ahead again, she spotted the Cowardly Giant being entertained with a puppet show which seemed to depict Hermione and her friends' victory over the Wicked Warlock of the West.

Intrigued, Hermione went up to the balcony to get a better view of the spectacle. She could rewatch in smaller scale the episode in which she and her mates sworn the Wizard to defeat the Wicked Warlock, passing through the time when she was made prisoner in his castle until her friends come in her rescue and strike a battle that consummated the tyrant's demise in consequence of a bucket of water thrown by Hermione.

_It was for a greater good_, she tried to justify herself when the vertigo turned to emerge, _and now the Wizard will take me back home now that I've fullfilled the pledge_.

A squeaky cry rose above the fracas. "Look, it's Prongs!"

Hermione lifted her gaze. Glowing against the cloudless sky, a translucent orb of a golden tonality garnished with a pair of long wings hovered above the croud. Inside, a handsome young man wearing a magnificent cerulean doublet and grasping a long silvery scepter smiled widely and waved to the people below, interrupting the gesture once in a while to dip his hand into his short black hair, whose locks stood on end like freshly cut grass, pointing in all directions.

"It's good to see me, isn't it?" asked Prongs, the Benevolent, to the enraptured mob as the sphere approached the ground. Yells of approval resonated from the crowd. "Please, there's no need to respond, that was rhetorical," replied the sorcerer offering an expanded view of his perfect teeth.

He strutted himself, cleaned his throat and inhaled deeply. "Fellow Ozians," Prongs declaimed in a considerably more solemn intonation, "Let us be glad, let us be grateful, let us rejoicify that goodness could subdue the wicked workings of you-know-who! Isn't it nice to know that good will conquer evil? The truth we all believe'll by and by outlive a lie for you and—"

"Prongs!" a raucous shout broke out from somewhere near the gates of the Emerald City, cutting his speech. "Exactly how dead is he?"

The holy man sighed. "Well, there has been much rumor and speculation… innuendo, outuendo… but let me set the record straight. According to the Time Dragon Clock, the melting occurred at the 13th hour; a direct result of a bucket of water thrown by a female child." His lower jaw quivered as he took breath "Yes, the Wicked Warlock of the West is dead!"

A ragged wave of shouts thundered savagely, louder and wilder than ever. Hermione could grasp scattered fragments of phrases that jutted out from the uproar. _"…justice has been done!…"_, _"…no one mourns the wicked…"_, _"… reap what he have sewn…"_, _"…may the Hell be austere with him!…"_…

Prongs' magically amplified voice supplanted the clamor, keeping up with his spiel. "And goodness knows the wicked's lives are lonely. Goodness knows the wicked die alone. It just shows when you're wicked you're left only on your own…" he got off his bubble and began to walk among the citizens, shaking their hands and waving to the ones out of his reach as he passed by, smothered with adoration.

"Mister Prongs," Hermione asked when she found herself close enough to him to be heard. "Why does wickedness happen?"

Prongs turned to face Hermione and smiled broadly when he acknowledged her presence; although, Hermione couldn't help but notice, his facial muscles must have been aching from holding up with that grin for so long: he seemed to bear some difficulty to sustain his smile to her.

"That's a good question, Miss Hermione; one that many people find confusifying. Are people born wicked, or do they have wickedness thrust upon them? After all, he had a childhood. He had a father, who just happened to be the governor of Munchkinland, he had a mother too, as so many do… "

But Prongs never made it to his point, for an agglomeration of children fenced him in, begging for his blessing. With his full attention diverted to the little ones Hermione gave up getting some enlightenment and turned away from the sorcerer.

" Quite a nice fella, this Prongs the Benevolent, eh?" said a husky voice beside her; Hagrid, the Cowardly Giant, had his smily little eyes aimed on her from his furry face.

"Yes, he's very kind," Hermione agreed, watching the living saint talk to the Tin Woman. From the four of them, she was the one who most struggled to honor their oath, putting all of her nonexistent heart into the task.

"Do you think we did well, Hagrid? Killing someone in order to get our wishes?" she asked, contemplative, following Prongs with her gaze as the lowering sun behind him cast an aura of rosy glow around his figure.

"Well… I think we earned mo' than some guts fer me, brains fer the Scarecrow and a heart fer our tin fellow. An', o' course, your travel back home" said the Cowardly Giant, caressing his beard. "We gave safety and hope ter all these people, doesn' it make yeh feel good?"

"Yes," she answered vaguely, observing Prongs compliment the Scarecrow. Downcast face and adressing him in undertone, the wicker lady always behaved like that next to the sorcerer as a sign of respect or shyness or, perhaps, both. Hermione could grasp her reasons; she also felt intimidated by his powerful presence. "But what if we did some bad while trying to do good? I didn't actually thought about the implications of killing someone until I effectively did."

He shrugged. "Well, yeh trusted yer instincts. The creature we defeated was no man, 'ad no soul. He was a devilish fiend, made out o' nothing but the purest murk. No one mourns the wicked."

Prongs stepped back onto his winged orb. "Well, this has been fun! But as you can imagine I have much to attend to. So, if there are no further questions…"

No one answered, except for one and other _"we love you, Prongs!"_when the sphere raised towards the sky, a golden spot against the ginger vault. It had reached the size of a littlefinger's phalanx when a shout echoed in the dusk.

_"Prongs!… Is it true you were his friend?" _

To Hermione's bemusement it was the Scarecrow who inquired him, though she didn't recognize her voice until she followed its source. Hermione could read in her friend's cloth face that she had been bearing that curiosity for some time.

Prongs spluttered, "Well, huh… I… you see… um… _yes_."

A collective gasp erupted from the crowd.

"Well, it depends on what you mean by _'friend'_," he recomposed. "I did know him. That is, our paths did cross… at school…"

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><p>Oh, foreshadowing... isn't it a beautiful thing? I loved to write from the perspective of little Dorothy!Hermione and her naive interpretation of what's going on around her, YOU KNOW NOTHING, HERMIONE GRANGER!<p>

In case you're not familiar with _Wicked_, the "you-know-who" James refers to is Snape, not Voldemort. And he's supposed to be speaking, not singing.

This chapter was exceptionally beta'd by Lindsay, my special thanks to her.


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